Date: 1845

"Their minds had been starved by their cruel masters. They had been shut up in mental darkness."

— Douglass, Frederick (1818-1895)

Date: 1890

"We noticed smallest things, / Things overlooked before, / By this great light upon our  minds / Italicized, as 't were."

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)

Date: 1892

"I found the phrase to every thought / I ever had, but one; / And that defies me,--as a hand / Did try to chalk the sun // To races nurtured in the dark."

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)

Date: 1892

"It's past set down before the soul, / And lighted with a match, / Perusal to facilitate / Of its condensed despatch."

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)

Date: 1892

"Grant me, O Lord, a sunny mind, / Thy windy will to bear!"

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)

Date: 1922

"I plucked my soul out of its secret place, / And held it to the mirror of my eye, / To see it like a star against the sky, / A twitching body quivering in space, / A spark of passion shining on my face."

— McKay, Claude (1889-1948)

Date: 1922

"All night, through the eternity of night, / Pain was my portion though I could not feel. / Deep in my humbled heart you ground your heel, / Till I was reft of even my inner light, / Till reason from my mind had taken flight, / And all my world went whirling in a reel."

— McKay, Claude (1889-1948)

Date: September, 1934

"When the mind is dark with the multiple shadows of facts, / There is no heat of the sun can warm the mind."

— Miles, Josephine (1911-1985)

Date: September, 1934

"This weight of knowledge dark on the brain is never / To be burnt out like fever, // But will slowly, with speech to tell the way and ease it, / Will sink into the blood, and warm, and slowly / Move in the veins, and murmur, and come at length / To the tongue's tip and the finger's tip most lowl...

— Miles, Josephine (1911-1985)

Date: w. 1936, 1938

"The year plunges into night / and the heart plunges / lower than night // to an empty, windswept place / without sun, stars or moon / but a peculiar light as of thought // that spins a dark fire-- / whirling upon itself until, / in the cold, it kindles // to make a man aware of nothing / that he...

— Williams, William Carlos (1883-1963)